Figure 2.15 summarizes the basic quantum model that the following chapters explain in more detail:
1. Quantum servers allocate processing
2. That spreads on the quantum network as waves
3. Until they interact to overload a node
4. That reboots in a physical event.
A photon is then a processing wave that spreads in all directions by node-to-node transfer until it overloads a node point in a physical event that causes it to restart again. Quantum waves as processing waves can evolve on a network, superpose when they overlap, collide when they overload a node, collapse when a node reboots and entangle if the restart merges the processing, as discussed later. Quantum waves as processing waves even explain relativity in Chapter 5. To reverse engineer the equations of physics only requires us to accept that a quantum processing engine could create the physical world as a virtual reality.
Last century, physics invented a tale of quantum waves spreading at light speed that collapsed instantly to a physical event when observed. It made no sense because no physical wave could do that but it worked brilliantly! No-one noticed at the time that quantum theory could be describing processing waves on a network.
In quantum theory, we must interact with reality to observe it, as Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle implies that to observe a photon, we must change it and the symmetry of interactions implies that both parties observe. It follows that physical reality is like a painting that we can’t see until we paint it, on a vast landscape where many others are doing the same. We only see our local here and now and from this deduce the universe, but it is hubris to assume that we are the only “painters”. If our time and space are defined by the directions and speed that we paint, without that “painting”, time and space as we know it would no longer exist.
Table 2.1 given next compares quantum and physical realism for space and time, so readers can decide for themselves which offers a better explanation of the facts.